I am new to Diablo 2 and playing Sorc, I wanted to do it because I heard she is a great starter character that also helps you gear up other characters later on. I have her almost level 80, I have HoTo, Spirit shield, Shako, Stealth armor, crap boots/belt, and MF rings/neck. I am finding it really slow to farm certain Hell zones and impossible for me to properly farm bosses such as Meph, Diablo, and Baal without getting killed way too easily. My merc is also so badly geared he is worthless in Hell difficulty. What should I be doing or farming for if I want to be a fully geared MF Sorc that can easily take on Hell?
Hi,
You are already geared more than enough to farm hell. Andariel and Mephisto should be easy targets for you to improve your gear until you can comfortably farm chaos or tzs. Ancient tunnels aren’t difficult as blizzard sorc and might be a good option for very rare gear.
Google moat trick for Mephisto
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You have good enough gear as Odin said, what are your skill points allocated to?
Get the 105 FCR min to tele to the bosses
Farm Pit, AT, TZ zones until a Sunder of choice then load up on that skill to really farm well as a weaker sorc. I reco cold, but any will do.
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HoTo and Spirit Shield are BiS for lots of builds, and Shako is pretty great for a farming character. Lots of people stick with Stealth quite a while as well. if you’re new I am assuming you didn’t self find/build the Hoto/Spirit/Shako, but may have built the Stealth yourself. If you did so when you were in Normal using the first 2 OS armor you found, it might be worth finding an exceptional or elite base to build another stealth in for the increased defense. Just stick with a “light” class armor to avoid movement speed penalty and strength requirements.
The NPC vendors can be good sources to shop/gamble gloves/belt/boots. Look for resistance mods that complement your overall gear deficiencies.
But I don’t think gear is necessarily the problem, as others have said.
What do your stat and skill point distribution look like? Did you follow a guide or just experiment with skills/stats?
If you’re having trouble in Hell, there’s no shame in running NM, especially with Terror Zones, there are some good drops possible there to help gear up for Hell. In your case your gear is quite good for starting out in Hell so it may be a matter of fine-tuning your strategies as well, and NM might be safer place to do that.
If you’re a cold sorc, Ancient Tunnels and Mephy using the “moat trick” are very common starter farming locations. You can experiment and research areas that are good to run depending on your element of choice. Obviously if you’re focusing on a single element, running a zone that has a lot of monsters immune to that element will be slow going (at least until you get Sunder and other items that reduce/remove resistance).
Regarding merc gear, they can be pretty resilient even without “end game” gear if you keep a few things in mind when you’re just starting out:
- Don’t let him get too far behind your own level. Hire a new one (get gear off the old one first!) if you have to.
- Life Leach is really handy in keeping them alive.
- Get good damage on the weapon so that the life leach has a good damage base to be effective (since what he leaches back is a percentage of his damage).
- High Def, + Life, Damage Reduction and +Res gear is great for them, but they also get resistances as they level, which can help with gear deficiencies.
- Depending on gear setup and kill speed, a Might merc might be a good option, even though Might doesn’t provide a benefit to you. The extra damage can help the merc leach/kill faster which keeps him safer. Holy Freeze for the slow is also a great option (although if you’re cold may be overkill), and pairing Prayer with Insight to get the Prayer/Meditation synergy can be nice on a sorc.
- Position them with teleport - this can be to get them to engage what you want them to, or bail them out if they’re getting swarmed.
- You can give them potions. Holding shift while hitting the potion hotkey will automatically give him the potion from your belt. Rejuvenation potions work quite a bit better on mercs due to the instant healing.
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NM andy is the single best place to farm for SOJs. SoJs trade for almost anything in the game…
NM Meph is a great place to farm for most of the other stuff until you have the resists for hell.
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